The opening scene of this apprehensively-awaited remake of the classic Emily Brontë novel featured a hanging day. The audience is introduced to a dark screen for the first few moments coupled with a sexually suggestive repetitive squeaking sound. Instead of the poorly imagined bedframe, the camera opens to a swinging man in a hood. The sound is shown to have been produced by the friction of the rope sliding against a medieval-era hanging mechanism. 

The cornsilk-haired young protagonist, Catherine, is shown screaming in elation together with her servant Nelly at the excitement of watching the aforementioned scene. This middle age time period is well-supported by the set and background characters, where maids are shown tossing chamber pots outside their doors and street vendors are selling effigies of proclaimed sinners. 

Although the source material was set in the late 1800s, it appears that the set designers took more creative freedom with this rendition and pulled inspiration from older time periods. After enjoying the entertainment their small town offers, the young ladies went back to their imposing home in the Yorkshire Moors owned by Catherine’s gambling and alcohol addicted father. It is revealed that he has picked up a young non-verbal boy who would be living with them from now on. The boy is shown to be hiding under a bed and drags Catherine under the bed with him once she walks into the room where they are introduced. Giddily, she runs down to her father and declares the boy’s name to be Heathcliff, after her dead brother. 

This male character being portrayed by white-presenting actors has been a point of contention among film critics, as in the original story Heathcliff is meant to be a racial outsider. But this version of the story appears to place more focus on how wealth disparity can be dehumanizing rather than on the color of the character’s skin. Some may consider this a form of racial erasure, but others may view it as a simplification of the story. 

This film is ripe with jarring scene cuts, which does not bode well for the overall viewing experience. The time jump from the young characters to them being older is sudden and lacked transitory finesse. It does not help that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi look much older than the teenage characters they are meant to be playing, but this aspect is explained away by the script mentioning that Catherine is a spinster at this point in her life. The audience can elaborate from this fact that the characters are meant to be in their mid-20s rather than young teens. This melds with the more adult themes present in this movie. 

The nonexistent on-screen chemistry between the actors playing the love interests fell to the wayside in the face of overly raunchy sex scenes that some may find distasteful when they are expecting more of a slow-burn brooding romance. Although when paired with the gorgeous and expensive looking stage setting, it could be interpreted as artfully campy. Even if this film is not entirely true to the roots that it claims to sprout from, it does offer intense visual appeal and an emotionally moving storyline for more mature audience members.